Free and Open Source Web Meeting Service

Submitted by Ty on September 24, 2007 - 9:00am

dimdim, the world's first free web meeting service based on the open source platform, today launched at DEMOfall 07. dimdim is a browser-based web 2.0 service that allows anybody to share their desktop, show slides, as well as talk, listen, chat, and broadcast via webcam. dimdim's hosted service is available for free and can be easily used for small gatherings, to seminars with hundreds of attendees.

With absolutely no software to download for attendees, dimdim gives everyone the opportunity to hold Web meetings and to customize and brand these meetings. dimdim is a rich internet application (RIA) that includes advanced collaboration features (browser-based audio conferencing, broadcast webcam, slides, desktop sharing, etc.) so that anyone and everyone can easily and instantly interact, without the hassle of having to download and maintain software. dimdim has integrated open source software
applications with its own open source software. dimdim integrates, among other technologies, the world's most popular software for course management, used by universities, schools, companies and independent teachers around the world. dimdim also utilizes Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, providing dimdim users with the same sophisticated and scaleable infrastructure used by Amazon.com. Purely via word-of-mouth amongst the open source community, dimdim has already been downloaded more than 120,000
times.

"dimdim differs from first generation Web meeting solutions, as they were exceedingly expensive, notoriously difficult to implement and impossible to customize. dimdim provides a business-class quality Web meeting service that is free to consumers and extremely easy to use, as there is no software to download or maintain," said DD Ganguly, CEO and co-founder of dimdim. "We founded dimdim to enable anyone with a browser the opportunity to create their own Web meeting experience and collaborate freely and easily on a completely open platform."

"I always look out for practicality and the potential for social change in technology. dimdim's approach of bringing Web meetings, based on open source technology, to consumers for free, is both innovative and refreshing," said Chris Shipley, executive producer of the DEMO Conferences. dimdim has secured venture funding from the original investors in Skype, Hotmail, and MySQL. dimdim's investors include: Draper Richards Index Ventures, and Nexus India Capital. Howard Hartenbaum, General Partner
at Draper Richards commented: "Just as Hotmail brought free e-mail to the world, and Skype determined that 'the world can talk for free', dimdim is the first company to bring Web meetings to the world for free on an open platform." Suvir Sujan, Managing Director, Nexus India Capital Advisors, said: "dimdim's easy to use and free software is ideally suited to meet the underserved Web meeting needs of millions of small and medium enterprises and consumers."

dimdim's founding management team has loyally collaborated for over 20 years. dimdim is led by co-founder and CEO DD Ganguly whose experience includes: founder and CEO of Advanced Internet Management (acquired by Computer Associates), and VP of Computer Associates; and Prakash Khot, co-
founder and CTO of dimdim who previously led CA's Radio-frequency identification (RFID) Group as CTO.